Automation of tasks is one thing that I am an advocate of in my development projects. Getting functionality that is repeatable with a low risk of human error for a one time cost is a sound business decision and as a developer, keeps your hands on rolling more code for a greater percentage of your work day. It’s a Win-Win scenario.

The Windows Azure Web Sites team along side the Kudu team have added Continuous Deployment functionality in Windows Azure Web Sites with support for three familiar social source code repositories: CodePlex, GitHub and BitBucket. The team has also added support for Contiguous Integration using Team Foundation Service [a new Cloud Based offering of Team Foundation Server].

Windows Azure Web Sites now allows Continuous Deployment from Private Repositories from both GitHub and BitBucket.

Create a Windows Azure Web Site

NOTE: If you do not need a MySQL database, or have decided to go with another database option, choose Quick Create from the Web Site menu instead of Create with Database.

Associate a Source Code Repository

In order to facilitate the Continuous Deployment it’s necessary to have a centralized location to pull the website code from, in this particular blog entry we’re going to use GitHub and BitBucket.

Initializing a Git Repository will redirect the Management Portal to the DEPLOYMENTS tab.

Now that Git has been enabled use the collapsible menus to select how you would like to deploy code to the new Windows Azure Web Site.

Associate a GitHub Repository to Windows Azure Web Sites

Expand the item labeled Deploy from my GitHub repository.

Click on Authorize Windows Azure. This will open a window to federate with GitHub, you will need to approve the ability for Windows Azure to access your GitHub account.

Once access has been granted, the browser will redirected back to the Management Portal to a screen to select either a Public or Private repository.

After selecting the repository to be published, click on the check mark to start the deployment process.

If your repository is empty, push to GitHub to trigger deployment to Windows Azure.

Each subsequent push to GitHub will trigger a service hook and begin a deployment of the latest bits to the Web Site. Now that the deployment has been pulled into the Web Site, clicking on Browse in the Taskbar Drawer will launch the web application.

Associate a BitBucket Repository to Windows Azure Web Sites

Just like associating a GitHub account to a Windows Azure Web Site, expand the Deploy from my BitBucket repository. Authorize Windows Azure to access a BitBucket account by federating authentication through BitBucket.

After clicking on Authorize Windows Azure, a prompt to authenticate with BitBucket.

After signing into BitBucket a prompt to select the Public or Private repository to deploy to Windows Azure Web Sites.

Unlike GitHub, BitBucket will require you push a change to the repository before the Service Hook will deploy code to the Windows Azure Web Site.

Once a push has been made to the private BitBucket repository, the deployment will be pushed to the Web Site.

In the taskbar drawer at the bottom of the browser viewport, click the Browse Button.

A new window will open and the site will display the web files which were pulled into the Web Site.

Conclusion

Continuous Deployment is a great way to introduce new features or functionality to your customers in an automated fashion. With the new support for Private Repositories, Windows Azure Web Sites can help delivery stunning web sites which utilize either open source projects from public repositories, or provide clients with a customized solution from a private repository.

A while back I wrote a blog post on Enabling PHP 5.4 in Windows Azure Web Sites, when we enabled the ability to bring-you-own-runtime to Windows Azure Web Sites. This is still a valid solution if you would like to manage your own PHP.ini file, or if you would like to ensure that you are using a specific build of PHP.

It’s exciting to announce that Windows Azure Web Sites now has PHP 5.4 ready to be enabled in your Web Sites.

Even though PHP 5.4 is available PHP 5.3 is still enabled by default.

Enable Native PHP 5.4 in Windows Azure Web Sites

After Creating a Windows Azure Web Site, navigate into the Web Site details page and select the CONFIGURE tab. Under the framework section you will see PHP VERSION, select the box containing 5.4, it will turn purple notifying that there is an unsaved change.

At the bottom of the browser viewport you will find the TASK DRAWER, which would have changed to include a SAVE button. Click the SAVE button to enable PHP 5.4 for your Windows Azure Web Site.

Once the change has been saved, you’ll be greeted by this nice little success notice.

Finally, you will also notice that the purple indicator has now changed back to blue on the PHP 5.4 box.

You are now ready to deploy PHP 5.4 applications to Windows Azure Web Sites.

Three years ago, I began learning about this thing called “The Cloud” at that point in time I made a decision, much like I made as a teenager to get into Web Development in the first place. The thought that lead me down this career path was “Huh, this web thing is really going to take off, I need to be a part of it.” When I heard about Cloud Computing a similar thought ran through my mind, “Wow, this cloud thing is really cool, this is definitely the way of the future.”

A year into working with Windows Azure, I urged other developers to start researching the cloud [Get Started for Free] as it was still early enough to be ahead of the curve and set themselves out from the rest. Enter Windows AzureConf.

I cannot say for certain if I influenced any of these individuals in particular , but what I can say is they have also identified that the Cloud was future. Featuring a Keynote from Scott Guthrie (The Gu) as well as presentations from the Windows Azure Community drawing from their own Real-World experience with Windows Azure.

Recently, I came across someone trying to figure out where their code was deployed between Windows Azure Web Sites and Windows Azure Cloud Services. There are many things that you may want to wrap discovery code around between deploying to Cloud Services and Web Sites. One such example that comes to mind is use of LocalStorage in Cloud Services over writing directly to disk in Web Sites.

Cloud Services also have a way to configure custom Environment Variables in the Service Definition (CSDEF) file which is packaged up with a Cloud Service Package (CSPKG). Considering both Cloud Services and Windows Azure Web Sites enable you to expose Environment Variables this is consistent way to share information in either deployment method.

Configuring Environment Variables in Web Sites Portal

Configuring Environment Variables in Cloud Services

Environment Variable in Action

PHP

Node.js

ASP.NET Example using Web.config

In ASP.NET there is the concept of a web.config file. This is an xml based file which is used for storing configuration settings which are specific to a deployment. It is easy to pivot on environment by providing transforms of the web.config file. Let’s assume we have 3 environments Local, WebSites and CloudService.

This will yield three configuration transforms which upon build will roll up to the base web.config:

web.local.config

web.websites.config

web.cloud.config

Creating an App Setting

An App Setting is a Key/Value pair configured in the <appsettings /> element within the web.config file.

Web.config

Application Configuration File

We’ll set this appsettings to a value appropriate for debugging.

Web.local.config

Configuration Transform

We will provide a replacement element for the appsettings for our local test environment.

Web.websites.config

Configuration Transform

We will provide a replacement element for the appsettings for Windows Azure Web Sites.

Web.cloud.config

Configuration Transform

We will provide a replacement element for the appsettings for a Windows Azure Cloud Service.

AppSetting in Action

Conclusion

Depending on your development language or your scenario [as the Environment Variable route would work for ASP.NET as well] you can quickly and easily setup a way to verify which Environment you are deployed to be it Local Test, Windows Azure Web Sites,Windows Azure Cloud Services or any other environment you may have.

What is the Windows Azure Training Kit?

The Windows Azure Training Kit (WATK) is one of the best ways to learn, practice or teach how to leverage Windows Azure and it’s supporting services.

Official Description

Windows Azure Training Kit includes a comprehensive set of technical content to help you learn how to use Windows Azure.

What’s new in the Windows Azure Training Kit?

This release [August 2012] of WATK includes 41 hands-on labs and 35 presentations.

Hands-on Labs

We have pulled in some changes from our GitHub Repository and addressed a number of bug fixes for our hands-on labs for this release. Feel free to Report Issues if you run across a problem in a hands-on lab or presentation.

In this post I would like to highlight some simple optimizations for running a PHP Web Site within the Windows Azure Web Sites environment.

Strap on your Tool Belt…

There’s nothing a developer likes more than some a few tools to make the job a little easier. Windows Azure has simplified the process of getting the right tools for the job, to take this one step further, we provide installers for our tools for use on Linux, Mac and/or Windows.

Develop using Windows Azure Services

Manage your Windows Azure Services

You can manage your Windows Azure services all from the comfort of your favorite Command-Line. Visit the Manage downloads page to Get the tools you need. Fast.

In addition to providing Command-Line tools, Windows Azure services can also be managed directly from the Windows Azure Management Portal. The new Windows Azure Management Portal has been completely redesigned in HTML5 which enables it to be used in a variety of devices including Windows Phone and iPad. For Guides on how to navigate the Management Portal specifically related to WAWS, visit the Web Sites page of the Manage Services section on WindowsAzure.com.

Now for Something You’ll Really Enjoy…

In a world that demands instant gratification, performance is paramount, your Web Site needs to be able to deliver in a time of need. Even thought Windows Azure Web Sites has no issues being performing it’s still crucial that we think about optimizing for the best possible result. Luckily the team which built Windows Azure Web Sites has already done an amazing job delivering an environment which follows the Best Practices for running PHP on IIS.

Learning more about the Windows Azure Web Sites Environment

To better understand what is enabled by default in the PHP runtime on Windows Azure Web Sites, create a file called info.php which contains the following:

All of the Server Configuration Information you will need to understand what is capable in Windows Azure Web Sites in the context of PHP.

Debugging PHP in Windows Azure Web Sites

Every developer will inevitably at some point need to debug some code, it’s just a fact of life. If you look at the output from phpinfo() you’ll notice that errors are logged, but not displayed in the browser, which would significantly slow down developer productivity. Not to worry, here is a .user.ini file which will help you with debugging your PHP applications.

Optimize web.config Settings for PHP

If you take a look at this post by Maarten Balliauw on Tweaking Windows Azure Web Sites you will see the two files which provide IIS the base configuration applicationhost.config and webroot.config. Maarten was investigating how to turn on additional HTTP Verbs in Windows Azure Web Sites for a Custom WebDav server. Seeing how more and more applications are using REST, it seems fitting that we enable the majority of HTTP Verbs by default so our application can leverage them.

In addition to adding HTTP Verbs, limiting the list of Default Documents that IIS must rotate through will help optimize page load times. With these two optimizations I have started a web.config starting point for PHP applications on Windows Azure Web Sites.

Note: This post reflects the original state of this file, which is hosted on GitHub and may change overtime.

Migrating from Apache to Windows Azure Web Sites

If you are currently running an application Apache Web Server and would like to migrate your application Windows Azure Web Sites it’s completely possible, it’s even possible to translate your .htaccess file content to IIS web.config, or if you have a Windows machine, you can use the IIS Rewrite tool to Import mod_rewrite rules into IIS (then copied from the xml view into your web.config file).